UV Mapping

I want to take a cube and turn it into a building. I have the Pictures of each side of the building. I need a good tutorial to create a custom map. I have 2 Phill W tutorials but I was looking for a simple way to unfold the cube. Anyone with a good idea.

Comments

I want to take a cube and turn it into a building. I have the Pictures of each side of the building. I need a good tutorial to create a custom map. I have 2 Phill W tutorials but I was looking for a simple way to unfold the cube. Anyone with a good idea.

I haven't seen the tutorials, but people seem to like his style and what he covers. Is there a reason that the tutorial is too complex?

Any object can unwrap in any way you want it. There are built-in automatic unwrapping modes, but you can also do it custom, any way you want. I would suggest reading a book on the basics which covers UV unwrapping, because you're going to have to understand "seams" and other stuff if you want to do what you are suggesting.

Another option I suppose so you don't have to worry about that, since you're doing a simple cube shaped building, is to make 5 separate polygons, arrange them in a cube, group them, and UV each one individually with the different images.

hi shell sorry don't have car on this laptop, if you look hard enough in the uv map area (right hand corner of vertex room when uv map selected) you may find an option to export the map.

So select all the verticie of your object, choose box uv mapping - and export the uvmap, open it in photoshop, put some numbetrs on it and bring it back into carrara so you kknow what side is what number, -

then in photoshop add your real textures to this uvmap , if you take your original exported uvmap as the top layer and turn the parameter to 'multiply' you will see where the boundaries of the map are.... sounds like mud eh ? :)

if you select relax uv's and or unwrap (I am never sure, I prob should read the manual lol!) you can lassoo the sides and drag them around, resize and rotate
you can also move single points.
I am no uv guru, pretty ignorant actually but I have done this to fit photos to objects like leaves etc, also done a little bit retexturing clothes with images (nothing too complex, as I said, I am pretty ignorant!)

1. In UV mode, select all the faces
2. Select the model tab and change the default to custom
3. Select the edges as shown in my pic
4. Select the unfold tab, make sure it is in seams mode, hit the plus sign and hit unfold. Done.
5. If the UV map doesn't fit on the grid, go to the operation tab and hit fit
6. You can box-select all the verts in the map and rotate to suit.
7. Go to the display tab and export the UV map.
8. If you are having trouble identifying which part of the map in you 2d app matches which face on the model, have Carrara open with the model in the VM, select a face on the model, note which face on the UV map is highlighted and orient yourself.

I see you want to make a house from the cube - that probably means cutting in new edges and some extruding? Be aware that this will mess up the UV's - do the mapping when you are finished modelling.

for future reference,.. In the UV Mapping section,. under "operations", there are three basic options for box mapping.
(See pic)

You can also "export" the flattened wire-frame layout as an image which you can use as a template to build your texture map.

One other thing to note is that the simple Box mapping layout may reduce your ability to texture a large building with high detail,..
As an alternative method,. you could define each side of the building as a separate shading domain, and use Flat mapping on each side.
this gives you a larger working texture area.

You should also consider making individual levels or "floors", so that each floor can be textured separately.

hi Andy %-P
Shell, I am uploading a silly video I made NOW!
will post link when done
basically I boxed mapped a cube, selected one face at a time, relaxed uv's and dragged it to one side
then resized each one and positioned each on different parts of a texture map which was a photo of lots of doors and windows on the side of a building
can do lots of different really lowpoly houses using just the one texture this way
been playing with this since Scifi funk asked a simillar thing a while back

Once you click the "Apply" option for the selected Box mapping layout,.. each of the faces / sections, should be detached, and can be moved around,.. so, you don't actually need to click "relax selected UV's" they should be movable once you click apply.

Also, If you double click on an edge in the UV layout, it should select that face / section and then you can move it in the UV layout.

Q: Why are you a troll now .. that doesn't seem right, unless trolls are now helpful and friendly.

yeah, I never read the manual :red: for uv mapping! ;-P
just trial and error mostly, I just found they tended to not want to detach, prob did not click apply properly, tend to lag esp using cam studio
I have been "moderated" a fair bit and comments removed so I must be turning into a troll ;-P
(added that at 1001posts)
hope all is ok for you, we all missed you, a few of us have been trying to help others between trolling! :snake:

I want to take a cube and turn it into a building. I have the Pictures of each side of the building. I need a good tutorial to create a custom map. I have 2 Phill W tutorials but I was looking for a simple way to unfold the cube. Anyone with a good idea.

I'd suggest a completely different and I think easier method . . . don't use UV's, don't need to unfold; simply apply a texture (image) map to each side (and top if needed) using flat mapping as the shader

When you UV Map a cube (a single object) then by default, the entire object is UV Mapped.

When you apply a colour or texture maps to that cube, it will be applied to all of the cube, and any texture map, will be positioned according to the UV Mapping direction you specified.

If you want to have "Different" shaders, applied to each of the sides of the cube, you would either create a set of "Shading domains" (one for each side of the cube) .. or, you could use a single shader and a texture map with different textures in the areas where each side is depending on the UV Mapping type and layout options you've selected.

In the UV Mapping options for "box mapping", there are three layout options, ..Each of these "Layouts" will change the position of the flattened Cube "Wire-frame, in the UV Mapping grid.

You can Export that flattened Wire-frame "layout" as an image, which can then be used as a "template" to position photo's or textures, to create a final "Texture Map", which can be applied to your Cube model. (see pic 1)

In Carrara's shader room, you can also create a "layers list" shader, where each shader in the list can have different colours, values, or texture maps, and can be applied to the Cube using flat mapping which allows you to specify the placement of each shader
EG: top, left, right, front, back, bottom. (see pic 2)

Pic 3 shows Layers list,.. Multiple shaders on multiple domains, and a single texture map on a single shading domain.